Fire On The Mountain: Mindgeek, Purges And You
“Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority.”
“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
-John Dalberg-Acton
What was your favorite Saturday morning cartoon?
Think about it. Recall as many details as you can about it. Watching it, you knew who the good guys and the bad guys were, right? Maybe it was their character design, their voice, a theme music that accompanied them. Point is, you recognized who fit which role the moment they were on screen. The reason for that was simple.
Signaling. The hardworking people of that piece wanted you to know, by cues, who you were supposed to pay attention to. It’s why all your animated heroes have larger-than-the-screen personalities. It’s why the good guy always wins, and the bad guy slunks off to make a new plan. It’s a shame that everything else can’t be as simple. Because when we apply that basic principle to real life, signaling (under the sanitized banner of “marketing”) can be used to fleece you, your friends and everyone else into thinking a group is doing “good”.
In the waking world, the bad guy doesn’t simply slink off. They buy out their competition, hire a team savvy with marketing and memes, and create entire human relations divisions. They take the meta data you willfully produce and study it so they can make something you will want. Past a point, it’s not about the money. Not really. They’ve more than enough.
It’s about exerting control on the market that equates to real-world change, often in the form of laws that destroy competition, creative drive and ensure people like myself never raise our heads. Today, we’re going to give the origin story of one such company. A place that-try as it might-isn’t the tongue-in-cheek secret in your search history you mention with a chuckle.
Let’s talk about Pornhub, and the effect their recent actions have had on the industry.
Over The Hill To Face A Thousand Blades
Lots of people know the site. What fewer people talk about is that Pornhub is simply a part of a much larger company, MindGeek. If you’ve looked at a porn site in the last decade? It probably belonged to them. They are, single handedly, the largest source of non-freelance adult content in the entire world. They own all your favorite companies, they hire your favorite stars. If they don’t, they probably have entertained the notion of simply buying them out.
To spare a rant about monopolies, Mindgeek owning (or thinking of owning) the industry is bad on two fronts. One, lack of competition in the market ultimately will make it more difficult for individual creators and stars to break in or get sponsored/hired by a site. Competition creates incentive to consider your options before signing a contract, as one may offer far better working conditions and pay than another. With the existence of Mindgeek, if you want to work in the adult industry you likely have to do it on their terms.
Second, this means that Mindgeek (under the orange-black banner of Pornhub or itself) can radically influence the industry with a few keystrokes. If Mindgeek commits to something, the rest of the industry often has to commit to these changes whether they’re beneficial for their business model or not. After all-Mindgeek has massive site traffic logs and meta data to make these decisions from, so why not trust them?
Both of the above combine to create a dangerous precedent for the adult industry, one in which implicit trust is placed on a market-shaping entity whose primary concern is funding it’s perpetuation. No one truly “works” for Pornhub-they simply allow you in the market.
Market influence is directly tied to cultural behavior, and Mindgeek’s legacy is one of gross oversight and mismanagement allowing endless exploitation on a scale even the most wicked of us could not dream of.
Professionally Speaking: Exploitation of Content Producers And Workers
If you’ve been on Mindgeek’s sites, you’ve likely seen it. Blatantly stolen content freely uploaded without a second thought by an individual user. It was rare, if ever, these videos were removed. And how could they be? Unless a content creator was directly informed and disputed the upload, Mindgeek had absolutely zero incentive to remove a single one of it’s videos. Even if it was in blatant infraction of their terms of service.
Pornhub was where I originally watched a rip of Interspecies Reviewers when Funimation realized what they had on their hands. It’s where, one lazy post-fap night, I watched Akira in the original dub. Despite being comparable to Youtube in terms of content depth, they somehow possessed even less oversight onto what went up. In turn, this led to Pornhub (pre-verification purge) being a hotbed for piracy. Having had my own content and that of my peers stolen before, I personally can attest to the effects of piracy.
It fucking sucks. It means bills don’t get paid, equipment doesn’t get purchased, and I lose the creative will to continue as I have to resume non-kinky work. While I won’t get into the morals of pirating content from faceless mega corporations, piracy drastically hurts creators at my relative level and others. Many of us survive off tips and salient revenue streams like Patreon, Kofi and others. A community that encourages piracy of individual creators encourages exploitation of those same creators through commodifying their existence.
By not enacting its own policies, Mindgeek signals that it’s okay with piracy on it’s platforms. It’s okay with screwing over those with a smaller market share. When you’re the only game in town, you can get away with anything.
This is par for the course, as entries on both Glassdoor and Indeed are riddled with claims of sexual harassment, exploitation, ridiculous workload-to-pay ratios and much more. Worth noting, many of their positive reviews this year are within the last few months. Or, they time incredibly nicely with a massive community push to take down videos that featured blatant, real life sexual assault. Which they did nothing about until it threatened their monopolistic position.
To Kill A Titan
I want you to think of any major beasty in myth you’ve heard about in passing. The world serpent, the titans, even Jack and the beanstalk. Ask yourself-without looking the tale up-if the beast was actually “conquered” in the work. Did they die, or simply bleed? More than likely, they were only contained. Even with that beanstalk debacle, the titular character only killed one giant.
Mindgeek and Pornhub are our titans. It’s not that they’re too big to fail, though saying such wouldn’t be a stretch. It’s that they’ve the obvious advantage of brand recognition and sheer mass. Those who don’t already work for Mindgeek eventually will if they seek to advance their professional career. If they were left unchecked, I’ve zero doubt in my mind Mindgeek would be the de-facto owner of the entire industry.
I do not believe we can “take down” a monopoly in our community, either through truth telling or individual effort. We literally lack the funding, social standing and human-powered machinations to make it happen. What I do believe hurts Mindgeek and similar operations the most is a threat to their funding-which we’ve seen recently unfold.Visa and Mastercard openly stating they would investigate Mindgeek/Pornhub lead to the site purging all non-verified videos literal days later. In popular myth, this would be the part where we celebrated. The vile threat to our well-being had been contained.
Were that life as simple as fairy tales, I’d not be writing this at the moment. I’d likely be that isolated druid in the woods I always threaten to turn into. Just as with other parts of Mindgeek, one single action doesn’t account for the thousands of tendrils still writhing and undermining the industry and personal safety of thousands.
The push from Visa and Mastercard was directly due to the social rally cries about exploitive content on the site. On the surface, this looks like a “win” for all involved. However, Pornhub not only facilitated uploads, but allowed users to download those videos involved. They’re in the wild now. Nothing ultimately can be done to preserve the safety of those affected by Pornhubs total lack of care or oversight.
Additionally, no change happens in a vacuum or without massive social pushing. For every person who was genuinely victimized by Mindgeek, there were untold thousands of anti-porn, conservative-value focused groups using this to highlight the “abusive” nature of the industry. Mindgeek, by virtue of signalling to the entire industry that it was okay with blatant abuse, in turn themselves became a signal for countless “traditional value” anti-porn/queer sexuality/non-sex work friendly groups. Many of them have used the victims of Pornhub’s antics as focal points for completely destroying the industry.
All of these events have led to one of the most radical bills to affect the adult industry since SESTA/FOSTA. Reading the bill is much like reading Mindgeek’s reasoning behind their non-verified creator purge. It “signals” good intent that benefits adult content creators and individuals alike. As a casual reminder, SESTA/FOSTA were intended to do the same thing. In effect they gave countless sites, payment methods and more reason enough to bar NSFW content, freeze accounts and assets and much more. Much like SESTA/FOSTA, the aim of this proposed bill isn’t to benefit victims-it’s to drive the community to the “weirdo fringes” we’ve always been accused of being. It will, ultimately, drive adult content of any stripe underground and thus allow far more exploitation than ever before from individual groups and massive monsters like Mindgeek.
Imagine having to register consent to be in a video you professionally produced for public consumption on a registry that can be checked by government bodies at any time for any reason, and the nightmare reality of this starts to come home. Now imagine having to do it under your dead name (because of the federal government). Imagine having that information stored, allegedly safely, by a company that doesn’t give a fuck about your safety.
It’s not fear mongering when it’s already happened.
Then it’s just called a business model.
A Thousand Tiny Cuts
Mindgeek’s antics affected more than just their victims. On the flip were thousands of content producers who had their works unceremoniously (and often without forethought) completely removed from Pornhub in a blink. The following are quotes from performers I personally know.
“My experience has been rocky. Fighting DMCAs, getting banned, the fear of sharing your Pornhub. ….For reference, I review hentai videos for comedic effect and mild education…When I reuploaded all of my videos, all but two were rejected for *content*, not copyright. My video removals were on December 8th, before the purge. Since then I’ve been approved by OnlyFans and I’m moving to other platforms. I haven’t even bothered to look at my remaining videos or what remains of the site.”
-@TotallyDeviant on twitter.
“(on the verification process)…I used the service primarily as an uploader, mainly casually but also to see if it might lead to any further development as a content creator but since I didn’t think it was necessary at at the time to get verified, I lost my uploads…I’m not sure if I’d call it difficult, but I didn’t exactly get far into the process before the purge, I believe I left off waiting for a step to be completed on their end before I waited so long I forgot about it.”
-Anonymous
Verification pre-purge on Pornhub was, like other sites, an arduous process that often took longer for certain creators than others. Hence, many people who regularly uploaded to the site never bothered in the first place. Because of this, hundreds of thousands of hours of content were lost in a single motion. The livelihoods of thousands were affected, and many are understandably upset and disinterested in continuing. If a creator had a pre-established audience, there’s always other platforms-but the question of how many will follow them to it remains in the air until that happens.
After all, Mindgeek controls the game, and has the biggest share in town. Why go anywhere else?
Using a vapid, sweeping hand wave with good intent has ultimately done absolutely nothing to aid victims of sexual assault. It’s caused entire groups of people to lose salient revenue during the middle of an economic crisis and pandemic. It’s discouraged people from ever creating content again. Lastly, it’s given yet more ammunition for antagonistic groups to use against one of the oldest professions.
Mindgeek never wanted to be a lighthouse in the storm. They’re a wildfire on the mountain, burning everything it touches. Putting out such destruction seems a monumental task-but it isn’t one that the community can’t accomplish.
To Kill A Titan (But For Real This Time)
Mindgeek succeeded because of endless user support giving it the momentum to do so. While they likely will never go out of business, their success is determined by traffic. Want to hit Mindgeek where it really fucking hurts?
Stop going to their sites immediately. Follow your favorite content creators on social media, and support them as directly as you can. While there will always likely be a middle-man hosting or payment service you have to go through, it’s the easiest way to have real-world change on a content creator’s quality of life and ability to keep performing. I’d know. Donations from readers and listeners have kept my lights on, and kept me fed.
For the record, here’s a (as complete as of this moment) list of the sites mindgeek owns. Avoid these places like the plague:
PornHub, RedTube, YouPorn, Tube8, Brazzers, XTube, Spankwire, ExtremeTube, KeezMovies, PornMD, Thumbzilla, RealityKings, My Dirty Hobby, Sean Cody, Men.com, Digital Playground, Mofos, Babes, GayTube, Twistys, Peeperz, SexTube, PornIQ, Webcams.com, BDSM.xxx, Casting.xxx, Czech.xxx, DaneJones.com, FakeAgent.com, FakeTaxi.com, Lesbea.com, MassageRooms.com, Mature.xxx, Mom.xxx, Orgasms.xxx, PublicAgent.com, PublicSex.xxx, Teen.xxx, Tubes.xxx.
Before joining any platform, checking to see if they’re hosted by Mindgeek in any form should be at the forefront of your mind. If you absolutely have to go to a platform to host your content, double check that and see if you can contact anyone on the team behind the site. Ask them questions directly if at all possible. If they’re the least bit apprehensive about admitting being a part of Mindgeek, turn away immediately.
As a content creator, take the plunge and host your own shit. This isn’t the early 2000s anymore. Self-hosting can be done for pennies on the dollar. If you’re unsure how to get started, speak with a tech savvy friend or start reading. If you choose to host your content through someone else, read their terms of use and understand their explicit meaning. Can they gank your site for any reason? Yeah? Then fuck them, find another.
The reason I place so much emphasis on this is strictly because Mindgeek and it’s affiliates swelled just as any of us can. Word of mouth and content sharing. By decentralizing content hosting from one to two sites back to the individual creators themselves, we reduce the dependence on such services and thus their control. The ancillary effects of this also bring community back to the “kink community” by encouraging individuals to professionally and personally network with individual entities instead of faceless mega corporations. It ultimately allows creators to work at their comfort levels and relative understanding of safety.
Don’t send a single idiot with an axe towards the beanstalk. Send fucking everyone, mad as hell and ready to swing. By doing so we bust the power vacuum mindgeek has on the industry, and likewise create a safety net through community for when notorious or otherwise harmful things are coming down the pipe. Decentralizing content hosting, in the long run, would reduce overall harm to the industry.
Mindgeek has proven without a single shadow of a doubt that entrusting absolute power and influence to any individual entity sends us all to hell in a handbasket. As we look towards the future of adult content production, we should do so with a mind towards the human element involved, towards fostering an environment that doesn’t shame or push us out for not complying. I’ve seen good in the hearts of this community, and seen how quickly it can mobilize to aid creators and small teams in need.
So grab a bucket, and let’s face this smoke.
-j